New figures show that local trains on the Coventry to Birmingham line are running well below punctuality targets.

Figures have been released by Centro, the body coordinating public transport in the West Midlands, for the period between November 11 and December 6.

They show that the Central Trains services, which stop at stations such as Canley and Tile Hill, missed a target of 79 per cent of services arriving within three minutes of schedule. Only 64.9 per cent did so.

The targets were set by the West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority, whose policies are implemented by Centro, which will consider the performance at a meeting on January 8.

Operators can be fined for poor punctuality. But Cllr Peter Lacy (Lab, Sherbourne), the city?s representative on the passenger transport authority, believes the fault does not necessarily lie with the operators.

Cllr Lacy said the figures were not good enough, but added that the blame should be directed at those in charge of the rail network.

Cllr Lacy said one of the main problems was that the stretch of track between Coventry and Wolver-hampton remained two-track despite hopes that it would be doubled.

This meant that Central, Silverlink, freight and Virgin West Coast and CrossCountry trains all have to share the track.

Cllr Lacy said: ?During the last strategic review the message coming out of Westminster was that they would spend on things like the Birmingham Northern Relief Road, but we have a stretch of rail 20 miles long that is a bottleneck.?

Cancellation figures show that 98.3 per cent of scheduled trains ran on the Coventry line between November 11 and December 6, set against a target of 99 per cent.